


So Let Me Say Before We Part

by waltzmatildah



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-02
Updated: 2017-05-02
Packaged: 2018-10-26 22:16:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10795833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waltzmatildah/pseuds/waltzmatildah
Summary: Set in season 6. Prompt:You'll be with me like a hand print on my heart...





	So Let Me Say Before We Part

She boards a plane for somewhere that isn't Seattle and as it lifts from the runway, clears the ever-present grey, she wonders, fleetingly, if he can feel the point when she's simply not there any more.

A release of sorts.

She'll be thirty in three days and up in the air it's easy to believe in the future. In what might come next. A heady euphoria that isn't tied to false memories or the promise of possibility.

Of chance.

 

 

*

 

 

She lands in Palm Beach. Or San Antonio. Or Santa Monica. In the end it doesn't really matter. The sun settles on her shoulders, adds a weight she thinks might just drown her.

She comes to relish the idea it'll do just that. Beneath cumulonimbus clouds and with her feet on solid ground that seems to stumble and stutter under her nonetheless.

And letting go is infinitely more agonising than she'd ever dared to dread.

 

 

*

 

 

Her pulse thrums lightly, skims the surface of skin that feels stretched to taut and tearing. She lights a well used candle, pushes the stem into a store bought cupcake and doesn't even bother to extinguish the flame with a puff of exhaled air. Watches the wick burn to ashes and dust instead.

Tosses the lot into the trash, _happy birthday to me..._

Dials his number seven times. Disconnects the calls before they can drop through. Practises words she can't ever imagine him hearing...

 

 

*

 

_I love you..._

 

*

 

 

_I think I'll always love you..._

 

 

*

 

 

She works her way through seventy four days. Instructs her colleagues to call her Isobel and sometimes forgets not to flinch when they slip.

_Izzie..._

A reference to a time and a place she can barely bring herself to recall.

 

 

*

 

 

She watches the shocking events unfold on an early evening news bulletin with the sound muted and the vision chopped off as it is by the shadow of her own hand across her face. Doesn't realise she's on her knees in the middle of her apartment until her fingertips brush carpet stained a perpetual dark brown.

Screams.

There is no one left to hear her.

Doesn't stop until her voice is a ragged exhale of air across the back of her tongue.

 

 

*

 

 

There's a red-eye that leaves in four hours. She knows because she's checked multiple times over the days and months that have preceded now. A security blanket of sorts.

And she never was one to turn and flee, at least not until she did, but by now it's almost her default setting. She'll thank him for teaching her that much.

One day.

Unpacking was always a task that could wait until tomorrow, until next week, until next year, and so she's ready by the door, keys in hand, not thirty eight minutes later.

Stops at a spidered crack in the side-walk and can't seem to lift her feet to step over it. Figures if he's dead then there's no longer any point. And if he's not then...

Then nothing has changed.


End file.
